New Delhi, March 5: The deadlines for linking your Aadhaar number to various services is approaching soon. The extended Aadhaar linking deadline i.e. March 31, 2018 will cover all financial-related submissions like PAN card, bank account, insurance policies, mutual funds, shares, post office schemes, social schemes and brokerage firms among others.

On Sunday, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the body that issues the national ID number informed that around 80 per cent of bank accounts and 60 per cent of mobile connections have been linked with national biometric identifier Aadhaar.

PAN:

The deadline to link Aadhaar with PAN has been extended from December 31, 2017 to June 30, 2018. The Income Tax Act was amended in March 2017 to make Aadhaar mandatory for PAN cards. On June 1, 2017, PML Rules have been amended to make Aadhaar mandatory for linking all bank accounts, insurance, pension, mutual funds and DMAT accounts.

Industry body ASSOCHAM on Sunday recommended extension of Aadhaar linkage with bank account in the wake of the banking scams unearthed in the recent past. It said public sector banks, in particular, may find it challenging to complete the task of linking Aadhaar with the accounts of all customers by March 31.

“Following unearthing of alleged frauds in the Punjab National Bank and a few other banks , the PSU lenders are anyway firefighting to protect their core business and are hard pressed for human and other resources, to take up the job of Aadhaar linkage. Besides, the customers are also facing deadline pressure not only from the banks but also from payment gateways companies, which may also see a lot of disruption in the run-up to the deadline,” ASSOCHAM said.

Bank account:

The government has made it mandatory to link Aadhaar with Bank Accounts to bring unaccounted wealth to light. On December 13, 2017, the government on December 13 extended the deadline to March 31, 2018. Earlier the deadline was December 31, 2017. Failure to link Aadhaar details with bank accounts will lead to deactivation of your active account from March 31, 2018.

SIM card:

If you haven’t linked your mobile number, you only have less than a months’ time to complete the process. The government has made it mandatory to link SIM with Aadhaar to establish identity of mobile phone users in India. Earlier, the deadline to verify mobile number with Aadhaar for all existing customers was February 6, 2018 but was later extended to March 31, 2018. As per current data, there are about 128 million mobile phone connections in the country and over 25% of SIM cards have been linked to Aadhaar so far.

Insurance policies:

Linking of insurance policies to Aadhaar should be done before March 31, 2018. The Insurance regulator IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India) had kept the deadline to link Aadhaar and PAN with insurance policies on December 31, 2017. It must be noted that Aadhaar linking is mandatory for opening or holding a Post Office account or investing in small savings schemes like NSC and PPF.

Social Schemes:

Aadhaar linking has to be done to various social schemes to avail welfare benefits such as public distribution services (PDS), cooking gas LPG, MGNREGA Scheme, Government scholarships and pension plans.  The Ministry of Finance, in its notification had stated that if an individual is willing to open a post office account or invest in the NSC, PPF and KVP schemes, he/she will have to compulsorily produce his/her Aadhaar number.

Here's the list of documents that need to be linked with Aadhaar before March 31, 2018

Sr. No Document to be linked with Aadhaar Deadline
1 PAN March 31, 2018
2 Bank Account March 31, 2018
3 Mobile Number March 31, 2018
4 Insurance Policies / Mutual Funds March 31, 2018
5 Social Schemes like PPF/KVP/SSY March 31, 2018

The government has mandated submission of the 12-digit unique identity number to weed out unaccounted wealth and bring transparency in the system. Aadhaar is required as an identity proof of residents by various government and non-government entities. With over 1.2 billion residents already enrolled for Aadhaar -  a unique 12-digit number backed by fingerprints, iris scans and certain demographic details -- the programme today is the world's largest biometric database.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 05, 2018 07:02 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).